For a while building a new pc sucked u had the dram price fixing, mining boom and Intel's sky high pricing (I mean CPU shortage) its finally reasonable to build new PC's again.

icedman:

For a while building a new pc sucked u had the dram price fixing, mining boom and Intel's sky high pricing (I mean CPU shortage) its finally reasonable to build new PC's again.

Don't forget about the mining craze. And, before 2017, there wasn't much for people to upgrade to due to lack of competition. Meanwhile, SSD prices have plummeted. So yeah, only within the past year has PC building really been enticing.

intel "doesn't" care, they are banking on consumer ignorance and faulty perception, if intel cared they wouldn't have killed their validation teams which ended up with them having 10+ different speculative read exploits.

Astyanax:

intel "doesn't" care, they are banking on consumer ignorance and faulty perception, if intel cared they wouldn't have killed their validation teams which ended up with them having 10+ different speculative read exploits.

Did they care at time of 1st gen "Core i" chips? I think that they did. Yet even Nehalem has them. So question is, when did they "stopped to care"? And when did they "killed" their validation teams? I would have guessed that they simulated multiple approaches and picked one that was projected to have highest IPC. That would be reasonable approach considering that prior Nehalem and Nehalem itself was not really good clocker unless energy was to be burned at unreasonable rate. AMD is kind of in similar situation. They can't deliver high clock, so they are pushing IPC and core count.

Fox2232:

Did they care at time of 1st gen "Core i" chips? I think that they did. Yet even Nehalem has them. So question is, when did they "stopped to care"? And when did they "killed" their validation teams? I would have guessed that they simulated multiple approaches and picked one that was projected to have highest IPC. That would be reasonable approach considering that prior Nehalem and Nehalem itself was not really good clocker unless energy was to be burned at unreasonable rate. AMD is kind of in similar situation. They can't deliver high clock, so they are pushing IPC and core count.

the rapid validation program was in place since 2013ish, when intel was trying to get their stuff out at the rate ARM was progressing with their chips. the HT skylake bug, TSX bug, and various other issues happened with this in mind. I doubt intel had even conceived the speculative exploits

Its a good time to be a PC user.

And to think, pundits were declaring the death of the PC for years, LOL. I remember the late Steve Jobs comparing PCs to trucks and saying that they will eventually be replaced by cars (tablets) - such statements were silly then, and they are especially silly now, with the tablet fad all but over. Speaking of Apple, what I find especially ironic is how AMD fans recently lined up outline Micro Center stores on Zen 2 / RX 5700 release day like Apple fanatics for Apple's iPhone releases. PC is dead, huh? :P